Cemetery Grounds Showing Neglect Leesburg Commissioner Wants City To Take Over Property Maintainence

May 6, 1986|By Stephen Kindland of The Sentinel Staff

LEESBURG — Trash, weeds and crumbling headstones tell a story of neglect at Shady Oaks Cemetery, a 3-acre burial ground that apparently has no owner.

City Commissioner David Connelly, who wants the city to preserve the cemetery's history by better maintaining the property, says he and an ad hoc

committee involved in another cemetery issue will present the commission with a list of needed improvements at Shady Oaks on May 27.

Shady Oaks is adjacent to State Road 44 and Ferguson Street at the end of a residential section on the city's east side.

Connelly recently suggested the city preserve Shady Oaks during a commission meeting after several residents asked the commission to consider a city takeover of Lone Oak Cemetery. The commission then appointed a committee to study the possibility.

Lone Oak, situated on 40 acres along Main Street across from Lone Oak Drive, is owned by the Lone Oak Cemetery Association. Association members, some of whom serve on the ad hoc committee, said they are willing to give the cemetery deed to the city, along with a $38,000 trust fund and all burial records, if the city assumes grounds maintenance and financial management of Lone Oak.

Association director Joy Kauffman said the group no longer can afford to maintain the grounds, even though the city occasionally mows the grass and pays the cemetery's $500-a-month water bills.

Both cemeteries will be discussed during an ad hoc committee meeting at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the commission chambers.

County appraiser's office records list the Shady Oaks property -- referred to in a 1961 appraisal as a ''colored cemetery'' -- as belonging to the city, but Leesburg City Clerk James Schuster says the city has no record of any deed or title to the land.

''Just because the county lists it as ours doesn't mean we own it,'' he said.

City attorney Dewey Burnsed said a title search was initiated before the last commission meeting, and that he expects an answer within 10 days.

He said the city has no legal obligation to maintain the cemetery even if the city owns the property.

Several family members of the estimated 200 people buried at Shady Oaks -- which has reached capacity -- said they don't remember who sold them the lots. ''It was a long time ago,'' said William Henry Lynum, whose stepfather, Charles Barrett, was buried in Shady Oak March 15.

Julius Jacobs, funeral director at Dabney, Mitchell and Zanders Funeral Home, said he doesn't ask for proof of ownership of a plot when he conducts burial services at Shady Oaks.

''You just have to take their word for it,'' he said. ''No one seems to own that cemetery, and that's what this is all about.''